Keep Your Eyes Open
by Jazzxprowl4ever
Summary: The Walking Dead fanfic. Captain Rose Howell, a single mother and combat medic in the United States Marine Corps traveled from Houston to Atlanta in order to reach her daughters and family. There she meets a group of survivors when she couldn't reach her family, can she trust them? Will she leave or stay once she finds her missing children? Rated T, subject to change as story con't
Hey, guys! This is my first Walking Dead Fanfic, no flames. Contains flashbacks and the first bit is a flash forward. I do not own any lyric or song or the walking dead. Please enjoy! Comment for feedback!

Rose stared at the scientist in fear and hate in her blue eyes. She fought the urge to throttle the man for taking her choice, for trying to murder herself and her family. She shook her head, her scarlet locks flying, wildly. "Mama?" A small voice whimpered behind her, Rose swallowed her fear for her children. "Are we going to die?" She turned to face her daughters with a brave face and she shook her head, vigorously. Rose spotted Ivy was shouting at Jenner and Josh was holding their sister back, she ignored everything for the time being. All that mattered was comforting her little girl.

"NO, no. We are going to be fine, we'll leave here and go to the Fort. Okay?" She whispered, fiercely at Camilla and brushed the tears off of her daughter's soft face. Rose pulled her into a tight hug, Cam wrapped her thin arms around her mother. Cam didn't respond to her mother's question and buried her head in her mother's side. She feared to let her little girl go, she reached out for Eleanor and pulled her into the hug. "We are going to be just fine; you, me and the group are going to get out of here. Alright?" Rose looked up and saw Daryl watching her interact with her twins. The same anger she currently felt was written clearly across the hunter's handsome face but increase by ten fold. He was just as pissed as she was. Their eyes met; tough blue met grey-blue filled with unshed tears. She fought the urge to look away. Not for her, she lived her life. She had many mistakes over the years but she lived. Her daughters didn't have a chance to live their lives, those tears were for them.

Before the Apocalypse

"Hey, Ruby Rose! What's your plan for when we get back?"

Captain Rose Ruby Howell raised her head to meet her commanding officer's azure gaze, Derek Townsend was happy-go-lucky kind of man. She liked him as a friend, he was a good friend and leader but she didn't like his ceaseless flirtations. "A vacation to go visit my girls and my siblings in Atlanta for a week. I haven't seen my twins in months." The plane bounced and bobbed with the turbulence

"Daww, Momma Rosie!" Jake Huntington cooed at Rose, who scowled at her longtime friend.

She wagged a threatening finger at the charming blonde, "Watch it, Ken." She chided the marine with a sharp look. Sam snorted beside her, trying to mask his laugh.

"Where did that name come from, Rose?" Sam Hall asked with a good natured twinkle in his chocolate eyes. Shaggy blonde hair hung in his face and mischievous grin spread across his face. "Did a high school sweetheart discover the lack of proper equipment on prom night?"

"Damnit Sam! Keep your damn nose out of it!" Jake snarled at the taller man, Rose smirked at Jake, he always hated that nickname since they were in high school. "Quit smiling, Howell!" Her smirk turned wicked.

"What's got your panties in a twist, Jake?" Aiden Church snarked from his seat by Rose. Elijah Bishop blinked, sleepily. A scowl drew over the tired man's brow, he must have awoken to the shaking of Sam's shoulders.

Rose leaned toward her friends, her voice in a stage whisper. She grinned with a teasing tone. "Well, if you must know... It wasn't prom, it was homecoming and it was with the varsity football quarterback. He was a freshman and Liam was a senior..." The men laughed, Rose laughed with them. It felt good to laugh.

"Bullshit! Cut the crap, Rose! It's too early to mess around." Jake snarled at the redheaded woman, his tanned cheeks flushing deep scarlet.

"We all love a good laugh but please back off, Rose... For now." Derek ordered.

Rose stopped her teasing but the impish look remained on her sun kissed face for the remainder of their flight. Rose watched to her commanding officer speak privately into a headset, her gut told her that something was up. Derek ended the conversation and looked up, he spotted Rose's questioning gaze and threw her a confident smile. Rose sat back but the unsettling feeling in her stomach didn't leave her.

Guts: Supply run

Captain Rose Howell would normally be considered a strong woman, she's been through a lot in her thirty-three years on this planet. At the age of nineteen she gave birth to her gorgeous twin girls and was soon abandoned to raise them on her own by her fiancé. When her parents found out, they kicked her to the curb. Rose joined the Marine Corps at twenty-one to become a doctor and raised her twins as a single mother with the help of her brother and sister as she traveled to where ever she was sent. That put an outrageous amount of stress on both, Rose and her family but this. This was different, the fear of the unknown was almost unbearable for the Texan. She refused to believe in anything less, that her family was safe. When the outbreak occurred and the world went to hell, she packed all the supplies she could think of and hit the road in her Hummer with brother in arms, Jake Huntington. Houston to Atlanta was seven hundred miles apart and she had to get to her little girls. A ten hour drive.

The drive to Atlanta should have been a ten hour trip turned into a two day affair and when she picked up a fellow Texan and wandering Cajun. Johnny Harris and Amelia Jackson. To Rose those were the longest days of her life. Anxiety ran higher than ever to the Marine Captain. Rose's unwavering hope broke under duress. She cried for the first time in ten years during those agonizing nights, over lost family and friends. Over the haunting thought that her family in Atlanta was dead. When they arrived in Atlanta and she realized that she couldn't enter the city, she lost it. She sobbed and cried out to God, why? She prayed with shaken faith. Jake in his shining armor held her as she had her break down while Amy stood on guard over the two, silent tears spilling on her cheeks.

When she was over her slight mental break down, it was time for a game plan. She forced herself together and focused on the task of surviving. Surviving to live another day and to live to find her family. They jointly agreed to join a group of survivors until they could form a plan to go into the city and search for missing family. Rose had want to leave for Atlanta right away but she knew Ivy and Josh would watch over her little girls. Their nieces.

"Hey, Rosie!" Merle called to the redheaded woman as she tended to her arrows and her bow. Rose was cleaning all of her weapons today, she couldn't afford for her weapons to fail her when she needed them the most. She scowled at the man, they might have shared a kinship with the older man but he still infuriated her to no ends. The bond that fellow soldiers shared. That marines shared with another. Once a marine, always a marine. One she shared with her battle buddy, Jake as well and the other surviving marines. "Tex!"

Rose looked up and saw the Dixon brothers, both wearing sleeveless shirts and knives on their persons. Daryl had his crossbow slung over his shoulder, he watched her with narrow blue eyes. Glenn wasn't far behind them, he walked until he was right by Jake. She had the sneaky suspicion that Glenn didn't like Merle, not many in the camp did like Merle Dixon. "What, jarhead?" She growled back, softly. Jake raised a single eyebrow at Rose as he watched her tense at their interruption but she didn't respond to his questioning stare. She's been too quite in the last couple of days to Jake, that didn't sit well with younger soldier.

He raised his hands in mock surrender," Cool it, Devilpup." He said with a cocky smirk.

"Enough with the pup crap, Merle or I'll stick an arrow in your ass. I've served far longer than you."

"For once I'm with Merle, you need to lay off. We all know you're tense and your patience is wearing thin but hang in there, alright?" Jake murmured to her, loud enough so that the Dixon brothers and Glenn heard.

"We're making a supply run in a few days into Atlanta, you want to come?" Glenn asked as he peered down at all the guns that were laid across the table.

Rose's eyes widened at the possibility, of the possibility of finding her family in Atlanta. The air seemed to evaporate, robbing the woman of oxygen. Glenn's words successfully knocking the wind out of her. "When do we leave?" She asked, slightly breathless.

"When we're already and we're ready, sugar tits." Merle drawled.

Rose hastily finished her bow and grabbed her quiver full of a dozen arrows, she had more in the hummer. She secured the quiver on her back and slid her multitudes of various knifes on her person. Jake kept handing her the weapons, so she kept placing them in their sheaths. She grabbed her 9mm Ruger, sliding the pistol into her hip holster. Rose moved to clean up but Jake waved her off, murmuring about how Derek wanted to sharpen his own knives. She turned to the three men with a determined look on her face.

"Ready."


End file.
